A crossover between Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and another Final Fantasy game that will become apparent at the end of this first chapter. The caravan from Tipa has come to Mount Kilanda in search of myrrh--and there they discover that a myrrh tree isn't the only thing that the Iron Giant guards there.
Disclaimer: I own only my own Tipa caravanners and the plot as it occurs in the setting of the story; Square Enix owns the rest. No money is made off this fic.
The Discovery
Far across the sea to the south of the tiny village of Tipa lay the inferno known as Mount Kilanda. There, at the summit of the volcano, the great Iron Giant raised his oversized sword threateningly, glaring with flame-red eyes at the approach of five crystal caravanners. One of the challengers, a green-eyed Lilty, raised his lance in the air in contemptuous mimicry of the giant—to which the giant swung his sword at the caravanners, releasing a powerful blast.
Thankfully the caravanners managed to dodge the attack—all except a Clavat maiden in a blackened tunic who caught the blow on her shield. The blast knocked her down and wrested a thin-bladed sword from her hand, though it luckily sent the sword through the chest of a nearby goblin. The green-eyed Lilty seized the sword and quickly used it to dispatch another goblin that might have cast a spell on one or more of the caravanners. He had then just managed to hand the sword back to its Clavatian wielder as she scrambled out of the way of the Iron Giant's vicious sword-chop. The giant's sword shattered, spraying the caravanners with shrapnel.
"He's unarmed now!" shouted a Yukish woman in spite of the new dent in her soot-stained helm. "David, you and Dimo Nor distract him! Lydia, give me your magic!"
As if on cue, the Yuke and the Clavat woman prepared their spells while the two men—the Lilty, Dimo Nor, and another Clavat with messy blond hair who had to have been David—struck at the Iron Giant with their weapons, while a Selkie maiden rushed about in a tenacious effort to keep everyone inside the aura of the crystal myrrh-chalice.
"Blizzaga!" the spellcasters shouted in unison.
The spell's effect was immediate: the Iron Giant, about to pound David into the ground, flinched sharply as the cold blast struck. On a burst of quick wit, the Selkie then dropped the chalice and instead seized an urn full of water. She tossed this squarely between the giant's legs into a nearby mini-volcano at the edge of the clearing.
"Nice aim, Anaїs Nin," remarked Dimo Nor as the resulting heat-blast shocked the Iron Giant even worse than the Blizzaga spell, the giant's body blocking the blast from scalding the caravanners. But his compliment fell on deaf ears as Anaїs Nin grabbed the chalice again and ran off to one side of the clearing. The others followed not a moment too soon, for the Iron Giant recovered and sprinted to where lay another sword.
"Khetala, behind you!" Anaїs Nin shrieked in warning as the Iron Giant made another sword swipe immediately upon reentering the battleground. Sensing the danger, the Yuke woman bent forward slightly and appeared to vanish—the result being that the Iron Giant's sword and the power-blast passed harmlessly over where she stood. Khetala rematerialized just in time to freeze a third goblin in place with a Blizzard spell as it spawned, killing it with a crushing hammer strike. David easily dispatched the other new-spawned goblin before following Anaїs Nin's lead and tossing a water-filled urn into a mini-volcano intending to burn the Iron Giant again. His timing, however, was less than perfect: a sharp outcry of pain from Dimo Nor told everyone that he too had been burned by the heat blast. Angry blisters started sprouting up on the Lilty's face and neck instantly, and almost certainly on other parts of his body that his armor covered.
Throwing the crystal chalice to Khetala, Anaїs Nin made a daring move as the Iron Giant tried to chop her with the blow that shattered his second sword: she leapt onto his forearm and, using her racket as a pivot-point, somersaulted onto the giant's shoulder. She boxed the giant's ear with her racket several times in a desperate attempt to create a diversion so that Lydia could heal Dimo Nor with a Cure spell.
But no sooner had the spell healed the Lilty of his burns than the Iron Giant gave up trying to pound Khetala and David. He did not reach up to pluck Anaїs Nin off his ear as one might pull an insect away by one wing, however. Instead, he sprinted away from the clearing to where lay his last sword—which meant dragging the Selkie well out of the chalice's aura, for in her position it was far better to hang on than to try to jump clear. The other caravanners could only watch in horrified awe as the Iron Giant jumped out of the clearing to retrieve the last sword, with Anaїs Nin struggling to hang on.
David and Lydia had just finished killing the fifth and sixth goblin lackeys when the Iron Giant jumped back into the clearing, sword in hand, and the shock of his landing shook Anaїs Nin off his shoulder. Whether it was the fall, or whether the Selkie had already succumbed to miasma poisoning, was of little difference when she fell down dangerously close to a mini-volcano and did not move. Dimo Nor tossed the chalice to Lydia so that he and David could renew their attacks on the Iron Giant as far away as the boundary of the crystalline aura would allow. With Lydia carrying the chalice and the two men doing their best to attack the Iron Giant, Khetala wasted no time in getting to the ominously still figure that was Anaїs Nin.
By all the good in this world, please don't let her be dead, Khetala thought desperately. This was not the first time the Yuke woman feared precisely this moment. Ever since the day that Anaїs Nin lost her heart in Conall Curach, Khetala feared every battle to be the one that claimed her life, for if she died, Khetala would not have had the heart or the willpower to revive her by magical means.
Had Khetala not been a Yuke, she might have wept with relief to press two fingers to the Selkie's neck and feel the pulse beneath her skin. Anaїs Nin was still alive. Barely. Her breathing was slow and shallow, and bruises were visible where the fall had clearly broken a few ribs. She might have also broken part of her shoulder when she fell, Khetala silently suspected, judging by the odd outward angle of Anaїs Nin's left arm.
"Is she alive?" Lydia demanded to know in a panicked voice as she produced her Cure magicite. Behind her, there was another dangerous spray of shrapnel as the Iron Giant landed his chop squarely between David and Dimo Nor. The very moment Khetala's vigorous head-nod answered Lydia's question, the Clavat immediately replied, "I'll need your help getting her back."
"Curaga!" Lydia and Khetala cried out together, feeling the wave of healing energy wash over them, healing their bruises and scratches and renewing their strength. Finally Anaїs Nin too was healed of her broken bones and her miasma poisoning, so that she was able to stand again. No sooner had she eked out a thank-you to the spellcasters, however, than the Iron Giant, struck down by a final spear-thrust from Dimo Nor, fell dead with a mighty crash mere feet away from her and Khetala.
"It's over," David panted as he scooped up the crystal chalice. "We can get our myrrh and leave this infernal place."
The caravanners followed David, with Anaїs Nin still feeling light-headed and needing to lean rather heavily on her racket as she walked, into the smallish cavern that the Iron Giant had been guarding, where lay the myrrh tree. As Lydia gave thanks to the powers of good for their victory, David set the chalice down on the stone pedestal under the myrrh tree's lower fronds. A heady feeling of peace washed over all five of the caravanners as the familiar blue glow emanated from the tree, from the trunk and branches to the upper fronds to the point where met two lower fronds. The tree remained luminous for several seconds before the drop of myrrh fell, bathing the fragment of crystal and settling splashlessly into the chalice.
The caravanners lingered for several moments after the drop of myrrh fell, but just as they were about to turn away and leave the cave, a glint of something metallic caught Lydia's eye. "What's that?" she thought aloud, hastening toward the object that lay a short distance behind the myrrh tree.
"Lydia, wait! Anaїs Nin's hurt, remember?" Khetala admonished. Even so, the curiosity of the caravanners was piqued as they followed Lydia. She led them to the thing that had caught her attention: it appeared to be a sword, permanently embedded almost to its hilt in the rock.
"Would you look at that?" Dimo Nor laughed in spite of himself. "A sword in the stone, just like in that old fairy-tale."
"This is no ordinary sword," answered Lydia. "It's not iron, not mythril, not even orichalcum—what do you suppose it could be?"
Dimo Nor shook his head. "It's not as if we'd ever find out—we certainly can't pull it out of the rock," he snorted derisively.
David, however, set the chalice down as he knelt to examine the partially buried sword. He brushed away a spot of soot and dirt from just below the hilt to reveal a short series of runes engraved there. The name spelt out in the runes, however, took him completely by surprise.
"It's the Masamune," the blond Clavat reverently breathed.